Abstract: Any given computer or network runs code from an enormous number of sources, including the producer of the operating system, the hardware, built-in and user-installed applications, websites, and the user herself.  Computers may also run code injected by remote attackers of various sorts including autonomous viruses, individual hackers and state-backed organizations.  What happens when the authors of these various software components have different objectives for the behavior of that single computer or network?

This talk will propose a simple theory that predicts which of these contestants will tend to win in different kinds of computer security contests, including the robustness of encrypted communications; the control of cloud-based and distributed computing systems; and some hypothetical future applications to the security of AI systems.

About the Speaker: Peter Eckersley is Technology Projects Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He leads a team of technologists who do both coding and policy work to strengthen Internet security, privacy, and innovation.

His work at EFF has included several projects to improve the strength and deployment of cryptography on the Internet, including HTTPS Everywhere, the SSL Observatory, and Sovereign Keys; efforts to educate Internet users about privacy and security threats such as Surveillance Self-Defense International and Panopticlick; rallying computer scientists in opposition to Internet blacklist legislation; and efforts to make networks more neutral, open, and transparent, including the first controlled tests of packet forgery by Comcast and promoting secure forms of open wireless networks.

Peter holds a PhD in computer science and law from the University of Melbourne. His doctoral research was on digital copyright and the alternatives, including the computer security dimensions of copyright policy.

Due to the overwhelming response we received for this event and to our space constraints,

registration is now closed. We regret that we are unable to accommodate any more visitors.

Abstract: The explosion of an asteroid over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 with energy 30X larger than the Hiroshima bomb was a wake-up call that asteroids of this size hit the Earth every few decades. Several large telescopes are in the works which will over the next 10 years drastically increase our ability to discover and track asteroids.  A large number of these asteroids will be found to be on orbits with a high probability (great than a few percent) of hitting the Earth with energy larger than several hundred kilotons, and a few of these will actually hit the Earth. I will discuss the consequences of us actually knowing many years in advance the date and place of an asteroid impact, and how current technology makes it relatively easy to deflect an asteroid in such cases. A number of questions will be discussed such as: Who pays for gathering and analyzing the data? Who controls the data? Who is responsible for deflecting asteroids? What are the consequences (political, social, economic) on a particular area which is known to be threatened during the time period before the asteroid is deflected? The scenario of human beings deflecting an asteroid from hitting the Earth is going to happen, and is something policy makers need to be prepared for.

About the Speaker: Dr. Lu is the CEO and co-founder of the Sentinel Mission, a project of the B612 Foundation. Dr. Lu, a physicist with a PhD from Stanford, was selected for the NASA astronaut corps in 1994. He flew two Space Shuttle missions, was the first American to launch as Flight Engineer on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and spent 206 days in space aboard the International Space Station in 2003. He is the recipient of NASA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal, and worked on Google’s Advanced Project Team.

Abstract: When President Obama approved the "Olympic Games'' cyber attacks on Iran, he told aides that he was worried about what would happen when nations around the world began to use destructive cyber attacks as a new weapon of disruption and coercion. Now, we've begun to find out. David Sanger, the national security correspondent of The New York Times and author of Confront and Conceal, the book that revealed the cyber program against Iran, will explore how offensive cyber operations have developed in the Obama administration -- and why they have been so little debated.

About the Speaker: David E. Sanger is National Security Correspondent and senior writer for The New York Times. He is the author of two bestsellers on foreign affairs: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (2009) and Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (2012). He served as the Times’ Tokyo Bureau Chief, Washington Economic Correspondent, White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush Administrations and Chief Washington Correspondent.

Mr. Sanger has twice been a member of New York Times teams that won the Pulitzer Prize, first for the investigation into the causes of the Challenger disaster in 1986, and later for investigations into the struggles within the Clinton administration over technology exports to China. He teaches national security policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Abstract: Adjudication of national security poses complex challenges for courts. In Judicial Review of National Security, David Scharia explains how the Supreme Court of Israel developed unconventional judicial review tools and practices that allowed it to provide judicial guidance to the Executive in real-time. In this book, he argues that courts could play a much more dominant role in reviewing national security, and demonstrates the importance of intensive real-time inter-branch dialogue with the Executive, as a tool used by the Israeli Court to provide such review. This book aims to show that if one Supreme Court was able to provide rigorous judicial review of national security in real-time, then we should reconsider the conventional wisdom regarding the limits of judicial review of national security. 

Abstract: In the early morning hours of March 28, 1979, began a series of events that led to a partial meltdown of the reactor core at Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the worst accident in the history of the commercial nuclear power industry in the United States. Catalyzed by this event, the industry leadership formed an independent oversight entity, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, resourced its technical staffing, and ceded significant authorities to it in the areas of operational oversight, training and accreditation, the sharing of operational experience and provision of assistance to plants in need. As the former President and CEO of INPO, Admiral Ellis will discuss the requirements for effective self-regulation, specifically, and consider the issues surrounding broader employment of the concept.

About the Speaker: James O. Ellis Jr. is an Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a CISAC Affiliate. He retired as president and chief executive officer of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), a self-regulatory nonprofit located in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 18, 2012. In 2004, Admiral Ellis completed a thirty-nine-year US Navy career as commander of the United States Strategic Command. In this role, he was responsible for the global command and control of US strategic and space forces. 

His sea service included carrier-based tours with three fighter squadrons and command of the USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. His shore assignments included commander in chief, US Naval Forces, Europe, and Allied Forces, Southern Europe, where he led United States and NATO forces in combat and humanitarian operations during the 1999 Kosovo crisis. 

Ellis holds two masters’ degrees in aerospace engineering and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.